To successfully promote and sell virtually any product, it is important for retailers and in-store merchandisers to display the product efficiently and attractively to potential purchasers. It is well known that a successful promotion and sales campaign for products depends in large part on the display of the product in-store, which is how most purchasers commonly view the product. The manner in which products are actually displayed, either overtly or subliminally, can increase or decrease the likelihood that a purchaser will select that product. Thus, in-store or "point of purchase displays" must be carefully designed to attract and entice potential purchasers to view and purchase such products.
Another critical problem facing retailers and "in-store" merchandisers is the need to sell older products first, and newer, fresher products thereafter. This is especially a problem in the merchandising and sale of perishable goods, such as chips and other snack products, which are freshness dated. This also applies, however, to other, non-food products which have a finite shelf life, such as batteries and certain chemical products. Given the substantial investment that most retailers and merchandisers have in their stock of merchandise, it is important for such retailers and merchandisers to sell the older or earlier dated products first, before these products must be discarded due to being stale or unusable for their intended purpose. Further, laws in some areas require that certain products not be sold after a certain date is reached. It is necessary, therefore, for retailers or other merchants, when restocking product displays, to backload or stock such displays with the newer product positioned behind the older product so that the older product is first presented for sale.
Backloading or restocking of product from the rear is not, however, easy to accomplish with most conventional shelf display assemblies. Fixed shelf or basket-type display assemblies are used as a preferred means for stocking products for display and sale. To restock such shelves or baskets with new product, however, it is often necessary first to remove the older product completely from the shelf before the fresher product can be stocked at the rear of the shelf, and the older product then replaced in front of the fresher product so that the older product is sold first.
As a result, the time required to restock such shelf or basket-type displays with product is greatly increased. Consequently, the labor costs associated with the restocking of products on such displays are increased, and the productivity of workers restocking these shelves is decreased as the number of stores and/or display units that can be serviced by each worker is limited by the time required for restocking these displays.
Further, it is common that the distributor of a product has the responsibility of restocking product displays, and thus is the entity that incurs the costs of restocking, rotating stock, and organizing displays. Such a "direct delivery" method of servicing displays generally is accomplished by organizing customers into "routes", each route serviced by a specific delivery person. Considering that a distributor's customers often are large distances apart, time is generally of the essence in efficiently maintaining product displays along a predetermined route. The time required for restocking product displays thus also affects the number of customers that can be serviced by a particular delivery person, and as a consequence, affects the size of a particular route and the number of delivery persons necessary to service all of the distributor's customers.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a shelf-type or basket-type point of purchase display that permits quick and efficient restocking of newer product rearwardly of older product on the display without requiring the removal of older products prior to restocking, to reduce the labor costs of maintaining product displays and to increase the likelihood that products will be efficiently and attractively presented for purchase by customers.